Traffic congestion is identified as a major global problem for motor vehicle transportation. In some cases, congestion costs billions of dollars annually in lost productivity, environmental losses due to urban sprawl, pollution, and infrastructure costs. In response, a number of congestion mitigation systems have been developed to reduce the impact of traffic congestion. Conventional congestion mitigation systems require sensors that are capable of accurate detection and tracking of objects including other vehicles. However, the detection of objects by conventional congestion mitigation systems require relatively expensive processors for computationally intensive data processing. Additionally, traffic congestion detectors are also costly and typically provide insufficient information for adequate congestion mitigation methods.
The embodiments described herein were conceived in view of these and other disadvantages of conventional object detection systems.